Austin Arts Collective

May 11, 2026 - May 17, 2026

April 03, 2026 - May 17, 2026

From Lydia Street Gallery:
"two faced. three faced. four faced. five.
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet.
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And, for thy name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself.”
William Shakespeare / Romeo & Juliet, Act 2, scene 2 / circa 1595
In the famous Shakespearean play ‘Romeo & Juliet’, Juliet is not allowed to associate with Romeo because he is a Montague. If he had any other name it would be fine. But, he doesn’t. She’s complaining that his name is meaningless. If the rose had any other name it would still be the same. So with Romeo; he would still be the same beautiful young man even if he had a different name. So, as Juliet says: What IS in a name? Why is it so important to have a name? What do we associate with a name? Name’s are commonly known as associators. They are a way in which we, as humans, can define someone as other. Therefore, we can determine a lot through a name. Of course, we can associate it. But, we can also control an identity to a certain extent. We can limit. We can arrange our thoughts and actions. We can also restrict ourselves. Why is it so important that we limit ourselves to a single name or identity? What is it about us that we allow ourselves to restrict ourselves to one identity? What is so exactly difficult or dangerous about having or creating multiple personalities? This exhibition seeks to understand the limitations of upholding a singular perspective - a singular identity. There is something more compelling at work here. It is the idea that the essence of a person or thing is more important than the name or label assigned to it. The creative world has a long tradition of embracing the pseudonym, the nom de plume, the alias, the pen name, etc. For various reasons, artists in literature, the fine arts, theatre, and music have decided that a different name will suffice. Sometimes, social circumstances required it. At other times, it was necessary in order to circumvent a difficulty or challenge. The artist(s) in this exhibition ALL originate from the same source. Yet, each of them has their own reason for existing. Each has the responsibility of dealing with a particular perspective or action. Each of the identities inherently adopts a certain way of working .... of creating. They have their own visual language and their own way of approaching a particular outcome. At times, it is necessary that they collaborate with one another, but for the most part they adhere to their own psychic boundaries. The artist(s) in this exhibition are associated by nature. But, they are designed by a necessity to bring order to a multitudinous expression. In the end, it is not important how the ART is created, or by whom it is created. The importance is in the thing created."

Reception May 15, 2026 | 7:00 - 10:00 pm

May 16, 2026 - June 20, 2026

From Mothership Studios:
"Mothership Studios is proud to present So The Story Goes, an exhibition of work from Ryan Richey, Spider House Studio (David Bae and Nate Ratcliffe), Josiah Brown
Curated by Jenn Wilson
In So The Story Goes, storytelling is not a linear act but a recursive one, an orbit around truths that resist direct articulation. The works assembled here mobilize humor, folklore, painterly tradition, and participatory play as strategies to destabilize inherited narratives and reconstitute them through personal and collective memory.
For Richey, humor becomes both a disarming mechanism and a critical lens. It facilitates self-reflection while permitting a measured sentimentality, capturing moments of wonder embedded within quotidian banalities. His paintings, built through accumulations of gesso and oil paint and incised with a kitchen knife, occupy a liminal space between abstraction and figuration. Reduced forms and suggestive compositions evoke the textures of Midwestern Americana, including its nostalgia, its awkward intimacies, and its formative dissonances. Sardonic yet earnest titles act as entry points, anchoring otherwise elusive emotional registers.
Josiah Brown engages the historical weight of Baroque painting, a tradition steeped in the authority of narrative and the centrality of the figure. By erasing and destabilizing figuration, Brown redirects attention toward the dualistic drama of light and dark, transforming narrative into atmosphere. His sweeping, gestural abstractions do not simply negate history painting but reconfigure it, prompting viewers to question the structures through which meaning has traditionally been constructed. In their place, Brown offers a self-contained visual cosmos, one in which mark-making itself generates new mythologies.
For Spider House Studios (Nate Ratcliffe and David Bae), storytelling unfolds through the logic of play. Drawing from the visual language of folklore, particularly Grimm’s tales, alongside principles of game theory in video game design, they construct intricate, hand-painted worlds rendered in gouache and watercolor to build the game. These interactive systems embed subversive puzzles that reintroduce the unsanitized brutality of their original source material. By doing so, they interrogate the cultural impulse to soften narratives for contemporary audiences, revealing the pedagogical and moral complexities that once defined these cautionary tales. Their work situates itself at the intersection of fine art and independent game design, challenging distinctions between participation, authorship, and narrative control.
Curator, Jenn Wilson Shepherd, extends this participatory ethos into the exhibition space itself. By inviting audiences to inscribe their own stories directly onto the walls of Mothership, she asks the audience to transform the site into a living archive. This gesture foregrounds the voices of an emergent artistic community in San Marcos, collapsing the boundary between artist, curator, and audience, and positioning storytelling as a collective, evolving process.
Across these practices, narrative emerges not as a fixed structure but as a mutable, contested terrain. Each work proposes that storytelling, whether through humor, erasure, play, or inscription, is a means of circling toward the unspeakable, of giving form to the latent, the inherited, and the unresolved.
Please join us for an inspiring and interactive exhibition So the Story Goes !
This event is sponsored in part by the City of San Marcos Arts Commission and our amazing sponsors like Rogelio's Restaurant, San Marcos Film Lab, Spellerberg Projects and Texas State University. Complimentary drinks will be offered from our sponsors Austin Beer Works, Tito’s Vodka, Cara Buena Tequila and Rambler Sparkling Water. In addition to the opening reception on Saturday the 16th, 6-9pm, open hours will be held Saturdays 12-3pm, by appointment.
Exhibition Dates: May 16th - June 20th, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 16th, 6-9pm
Exhibition Open Hours Saturdays 12:00 - 3:00 pm, by appointment.

About The Curator
Jenn Wilson Shepherd (b. 1981 Galveston, TX) is an artist, art historian, and curator that lives and works in Austin, Texas. She has shown nationally and internationally with Corbett vs Dempsey (Chicago), Beca Gallery (New Orleans), Packer-Schopf Gallery (Chicago), Eggman & Walrus (Santa Fe), Thomas McCormick Gallery (Chicago), American University of Beirut (Lebanon), University of Arkansas Fine Arts Center Gallery, and Kohler Art Museum in Wisconsin. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008."

Reception May 16, 2026 | 6:00 - 9:00 pm